Prime + Proper

The wine list at Prime + Proper lands like a statement — thick, serious, and unapologetically ambitious for a city that doesn't always get credit for fine dining. You're inside a gorgeous restored early-20th-century building with marble underfoot and ceilings that seem to go up forever, and the list matches the room. This is not a wine program that's phoning it in.

Four hundred to six hundred bottles is a real list, and Prime + Proper earns every page of it. The anchors are exactly where you'd expect for a white-tablecloth American steakhouse — Napa Cabernet and Bordeaux heavyweights — but there's genuine depth in Burgundy and Barolo that separates this from the pack. You've got Peter Michael Les Pavots sitting alongside Chateau Montelena and Caymus Special Selection, which tells you this program is speaking to both the trophy-wine crowd and the serious drinkers who want something with a little more soul. The Barolo presence is the most exciting part of the list — it's a region that actually makes steakhouses more interesting and not enough of them lean into it.

Twenty to thirty by-the-glass options is generous for a steakhouse, and the sommelier on staff means the pours are being actively managed rather than just defaulting to whatever's easiest to open. Expect the glass program to skew heavily toward Napa Cabs and crowd-pleasing reds — this is not the place hunting for natural wine by the glass — but the depth of the bottle list suggests there's more to explore if you ask the right person.